


Legacy Chain

by Merfilly



Category: Highlander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Mentors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:22:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28672194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: A look at the line of Teaching.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 19





	Legacy Chain

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Mentors

The first time he teaches, the man that will die under the name Ramirez grows too close.

It ends in betrayal.

He doesn't let it stop him, and the next time, he finds laughter and friendship that lasts for centuries. He finds friendships, and enmities, all over the world, and lives life well.

Even when he professes to bury his heart with Shakiko, he finds the companionship of mortals and other Immortals too tempting to steer clear of.

And then there is Connor.

In Connor, more than any other, he sees himself. A lust for life, brittle around the edges from loss and distrust, married to a clear sense of rightness.

From his first life, Ramirez would say Connor knows _Ma'at_ but says nothing to the man who still fears the Christian God and follows most of their ways in this weather-beaten land.

He holds nothing back from Connor. Every trick he'd learned from Ashe, from Nakano, every skill hard-won by experience, he gives it to this Highlander that the Kurgan himself has decided is dangerous. Has the Kurgan been to Cassandra or some other seer of their fates?

Ramirez does not know, but he will shape Connor to meet that expectation.

* * *

  
Connor is certain he will never teach another.

And then a MacLeod turns up.

Duncan's only three years into his immortality and struggling with it. Connor gets his story in pieces, and feels a sympathy for him. Thirty full years with the clan, even if Connor has lost all fondness for them is a hard thing to walk away from as a devil and unwanted.

He stays. He gives back what Ramirez gave him, and he watches Duncan struggle with it. For Duncan, death, even of a foe, brings pain in the shape of his memories.

There is little hope for that, and Connor does wonder, as he prepares to leave at last, if Duncan will survive long enough to be met again.

He tells his cousin to live, just as he'd been told he needed to, and goes with that uncertainty over fate.

* * *

  
Duncan does.

He lives in many places, he finds friends, and he experiences life to the fullest. The uneasiness at death's necessity hovers at the edge, but he learns to find satisfaction in the deaths of those that deserve it. He teaches, and sometimes that turns out well… sometimes it doesn't.

He looks over the ashes of his life this time, then at the boy beside him, and wonders if he has the strength to do it.

Tessa would want him to. And so he does, trying to give what he's learned, and help Richie find the balance between the pain life brings, and the joys it can be.


End file.
